These are notes I've written while setting up Bacula. The official site of this backup system is in http://bacula.org.
This is my first experience with a backup system. Before, I was solving these problems either with Subversion or scripts.
I need to explain following terms first:
; Director: Manager of backup operations. Responsible for scheduling. (bacula-dir.conf) ; File: The program setup in the machines to be backed up. (bacula-fd.conf) ; Console: User interface for Director. There are GUI and command-line based consoles. (bconsole.conf) ; Storage: This system is responsible to write and read the backup data to storage devices. (bacula-sd.conf) ; Catalog: Catalog service indexes all operations and files to enable finding necessary files and jobs. Catalog uses PostgreSQL?, MySQL? or SQLite databse.
I installed Bacula on Debian Lenny using Debian's native tools. Lenny installs version 2.4.4. whereas the lastest version as of this writing is 3.0.1.
The working installation will have multiple Windows clients. I have a Vista installation at home, may also run a test on it. Bacula site offers also older version of the client, I don't know if same version of client is necessary (or obligatory) but I prefer to use same versions in this kind of installations. (e.g. Subversion servers and clients etc.) Usually newer clients are able to talk with older servers (but not vice versa).
I then installed only bacula-fd package from aptitude to my laptop. I'll use my laptop as a client for backup in this test. My laptop uses testing (Squeeze) version of Debian and bacula-fd in this distribution is version 3.0.1.
The tutorial in the manual tells a setup for a installation from code. I don't think there are many users which install the software this way. In order to keep my software up-to-date with security updates, I usually use versions available in repositories.
Anyway, now I have plain bacula 2.4.4 installation in the server with all necessary components, and a bacula-fd installation on a client. I made storage definitions in bacula-sd first.
I have two disks in the server. One of them also contains the root partition. /home is a different partition in this disk. The other disk (which, actually I didn't format yet) is mounted on /mnt/backup. (Maybe I should also mount it under home for consistency.
Device {
Name = Disk1
Media Type = File
Archive Device = /home/backup
LabelMedia = yes; # lets Bacula label unlabeled media
Random Access = Yes;
AutomaticMount = yes; # when device opened, read it
RemovableMedia = no;
AlwaysOpen = no;
}
Device {
Name = Disk2
Media Type = File
Archive Device = /mnt/backup
LabelMedia = yes; # lets Bacula label unlabeled media
Random Access = Yes;
AutomaticMount = yes; # when device opened, read it
RemovableMedia = no;
AlwaysOpen = no;
}